The Bookshelf Conversation: Andrew Zimbalist

January 24, 2014

There was a self-help book that came out awhile back called Eat the Frog. Don’t know where it came from since I never read this type of literature (not that there’s anything wrong with it). The premise is, you get the tough stuff out of the way first and the rest is easy-peasy. I guess there are few things more difficult than eating a frog.

Last week it was art; this time it’s math. Two of my weaker subjects when it comes to intelligent conversation. But now I’ve eaten the frog, so it’s all cake and ice cream from here on in.

I’ve been a long-time admirer of the work of Prof. Andrew Zimbalist, who writes about baseball numbers, both financial and sabermetric (Baseball And Billions: A Probing Look Inside The Big Business Of Our National Pastime is one of the 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die). In fact, it’s the latter that’s the subject of his latest book, The Sabermetric Revolution: Assessing the Growth of Analytics in Baseball, coauthored with Benjamin Baumer.

Zimbalist — whose oeuvre on the game includes May the Best Team Win: Baseball Economics and Public Policy and In the Best Interests of Baseball?: Governing the National Pastime will discuss his work at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse on Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 7 p.m.

In the meantime, he did his best to add to my education. Here are the results. (Mea culpa on the poor quality of the audio.)

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